I feel like fried shit.
Currently doing round 2 with a crappy little head cold, Round one was a brief scrap about a week ago in which I emerged the victor, only this time it's brought its friend, the tickly throat, which must be cleared every few seconds. This, combined with a sudden chronic bout of IBS means I have been up since about 2am - it's now 5.15 am.
Just for the record and I may have mentioned this before, but I don't do man flu. I'm very much a 'shut up and get on with it' kind of guy, partly because it seems to be our unofficial family motto. In fact I started feeling the cold come back yesterday but still went to Alton Towers today for one of Pinklet's friend's 30th's.
(Holy crap that was a lot of apostrophes!)
{Yes but you know how we feel about proper use of language.}
(Yes, just short of a grammer nazi.)
{Well anyway, it was a nice segue into today's trip}
(Segway?)
{No thanks, I'll stick with my skateboard! BADUM TISCH!}
(Oh dear lord...)
So, up at 7, set off for 8 and arrived at the splendiferous Towers of Alton for about half ten. Turns out it's been a long time since I've been. Last time I was there, the Nemesis was the new ride. Of course I'd seen adverts for Oblivion and Air etc, so it kind of felt like I'd been more recently.
We met up with the birthday girl, (who was the same girl I converted to the chirch of Mike [mis-spelled on purpose - chirches are so much cooler than churches and need no fixed address...] so fervently that she told Pinks that she would hunt her down and kill her if she hurt me, lol) and went on Obvlivion - the world's first vertical drop roller coaster. It was pretty good. They spray a load of mist around the entrance to the tunnel under the drop, presumably to make it look cool, but it meant I had trouble seeing and I like seeing. It was really short too, once you'd done the drop, you came out the other side of the tunnel, turned a corner and that was it. Was it worth 50 minutes of queuing? Maybe not, but it was fun.
As we were queueing, the other members of the party arrived. Next was food and then on to Rita: queen of speed which uses magnets to propel the coaster along. The acceleration at the beginning is nothing short of incredible and lots of fun, but 'Rita'? Can you imagine the meetings?
Then we went on Duel, which is basically a ghost train with laser tag. A winning combination I feel. I was particularly pleased with my score of 33,700, which trounced the other guys in my car until we stopped and one of the girls had scored 36,400. Drat, beaten by a girl. (And didn't have to pay for the privilege! And people should say drat more. I'm bringing it back...)
Then we all went and had an old style sepia photo taken, dressed as gangsters. (Prohibition era Mafia types, not modern thug 'gangsta's'.) With my scruffy beard and piercings I looked every bit like I'd stepped out of Goodfellas - as long as it was Goodfellas Italian restaurant.
By then it was getting to the point where we had to decide what ride to queue for as it was likely to be the last of the day. Several of the gang were rided-out so to speak, but four of us made our way to Air. Air is the one where you sit in and then it rotates the seats back 90 degrees so you're in almost a 'Superman' position. We queued separately to get on the front row and after two of the girls sent a pair of couples packing after they tried to get on the front car after queuing in the normal line, we got on.
BEST RIDE EVER.
It's fucking awesome. I highly recommend it.
So then a 2 and 3/4 hour drive home, a curry, some Eddie Izzard, wine, a spliff then bed.
Then up again and here I am.
In other news this week I attended a freestyle martial arts class near my house on Tuesday and thoroughly enjoyed myself, including laying on the floor and covering your head while the instructor hit you repeatedly around the head wearing focus mitts (target mitts, punch pads, whatever.).
But fuck me did I ache. For days afterwards. At one point I thought I'd put a shoulder out because it ached inside the joint. I won't be going this week due to being ill, but next week, definitely.
I also finished coding a little Javascript program that displays images, but in the same image space, one after another like a rotating advert. (which is what it will be used for.) I'm pretty pleased with myself about this as,
a) I wrote all the code myself from scratch.
b) It's not my job to work on the website really.
c) It's pretty flexible - it currently uses 5 images, but could in theory, use any number. I could also easily change the size of the images.
d) I managed to get it to fade the image in, then show it for four seconds, (again I could configure how long they display for,) then fade out, swap to the next image and fade in etc.
e) The fading in and out part was tricky, partly due to different browsers having different methods for opacity but I got it working for IE and Firefox - the script even tests to see what browser you are using and then uses the appropriate functions. I could get it working for Opera, Safari and Chrome... if I could be arsed.
f) At one point I had the image swapping and fade in-out as separate functions, because that was the only way it would work. The timing was difficult though - it would play through ok the first time but then on the second run you could see the images swapping before they'd fully faded out and it got worse the longer it ran. I was thinking about how to get it to start over ater one full run and then had a flash of inspiration about how to combine the two functions and presto! It worked.
g) For each image it shows, they each have their own link and alt attributes.
h) I even managed to figure out how to get it to stop swapping images AND fading in and out when you hover your mouse over it. Not only that, but it instantly goes to 100% opaque when you do, regardless of how far faded in or out it was at the time.
i) Although I did see Javascript versions of this sort of thing online, I decided to write it myself from scratch, (see point a) ) and my code is a lot shorter and simpler than those I saw. Occam's razor y'all.
j) It will be made freely available to anyone who wants it at some point, fully commented and ready to use.
Finally a paradox struck me tonight. I LOVE the act of typing. Love it. I like writing blogs or writing code and my head swims daily with ideas for stories, or parts of them.
So why the fuck can't I seem to get my arse in gear and actually finish writing at least one of my novels?
Currently doing round 2 with a crappy little head cold, Round one was a brief scrap about a week ago in which I emerged the victor, only this time it's brought its friend, the tickly throat, which must be cleared every few seconds. This, combined with a sudden chronic bout of IBS means I have been up since about 2am - it's now 5.15 am.
Just for the record and I may have mentioned this before, but I don't do man flu. I'm very much a 'shut up and get on with it' kind of guy, partly because it seems to be our unofficial family motto. In fact I started feeling the cold come back yesterday but still went to Alton Towers today for one of Pinklet's friend's 30th's.
(Holy crap that was a lot of apostrophes!)
{Yes but you know how we feel about proper use of language.}
(Yes, just short of a grammer nazi.)
{Well anyway, it was a nice segue into today's trip}
(Segway?)
{No thanks, I'll stick with my skateboard! BADUM TISCH!}
(Oh dear lord...)
So, up at 7, set off for 8 and arrived at the splendiferous Towers of Alton for about half ten. Turns out it's been a long time since I've been. Last time I was there, the Nemesis was the new ride. Of course I'd seen adverts for Oblivion and Air etc, so it kind of felt like I'd been more recently.
We met up with the birthday girl, (who was the same girl I converted to the chirch of Mike [mis-spelled on purpose - chirches are so much cooler than churches and need no fixed address...] so fervently that she told Pinks that she would hunt her down and kill her if she hurt me, lol) and went on Obvlivion - the world's first vertical drop roller coaster. It was pretty good. They spray a load of mist around the entrance to the tunnel under the drop, presumably to make it look cool, but it meant I had trouble seeing and I like seeing. It was really short too, once you'd done the drop, you came out the other side of the tunnel, turned a corner and that was it. Was it worth 50 minutes of queuing? Maybe not, but it was fun.
As we were queueing, the other members of the party arrived. Next was food and then on to Rita: queen of speed which uses magnets to propel the coaster along. The acceleration at the beginning is nothing short of incredible and lots of fun, but 'Rita'? Can you imagine the meetings?
Then we went on Duel, which is basically a ghost train with laser tag. A winning combination I feel. I was particularly pleased with my score of 33,700, which trounced the other guys in my car until we stopped and one of the girls had scored 36,400. Drat, beaten by a girl. (And didn't have to pay for the privilege! And people should say drat more. I'm bringing it back...)
Then we all went and had an old style sepia photo taken, dressed as gangsters. (Prohibition era Mafia types, not modern thug 'gangsta's'.) With my scruffy beard and piercings I looked every bit like I'd stepped out of Goodfellas - as long as it was Goodfellas Italian restaurant.
By then it was getting to the point where we had to decide what ride to queue for as it was likely to be the last of the day. Several of the gang were rided-out so to speak, but four of us made our way to Air. Air is the one where you sit in and then it rotates the seats back 90 degrees so you're in almost a 'Superman' position. We queued separately to get on the front row and after two of the girls sent a pair of couples packing after they tried to get on the front car after queuing in the normal line, we got on.
BEST RIDE EVER.
It's fucking awesome. I highly recommend it.
So then a 2 and 3/4 hour drive home, a curry, some Eddie Izzard, wine, a spliff then bed.
Then up again and here I am.
In other news this week I attended a freestyle martial arts class near my house on Tuesday and thoroughly enjoyed myself, including laying on the floor and covering your head while the instructor hit you repeatedly around the head wearing focus mitts (target mitts, punch pads, whatever.).
But fuck me did I ache. For days afterwards. At one point I thought I'd put a shoulder out because it ached inside the joint. I won't be going this week due to being ill, but next week, definitely.
I also finished coding a little Javascript program that displays images, but in the same image space, one after another like a rotating advert. (which is what it will be used for.) I'm pretty pleased with myself about this as,
a) I wrote all the code myself from scratch.
b) It's not my job to work on the website really.
c) It's pretty flexible - it currently uses 5 images, but could in theory, use any number. I could also easily change the size of the images.
d) I managed to get it to fade the image in, then show it for four seconds, (again I could configure how long they display for,) then fade out, swap to the next image and fade in etc.
e) The fading in and out part was tricky, partly due to different browsers having different methods for opacity but I got it working for IE and Firefox - the script even tests to see what browser you are using and then uses the appropriate functions. I could get it working for Opera, Safari and Chrome... if I could be arsed.
f) At one point I had the image swapping and fade in-out as separate functions, because that was the only way it would work. The timing was difficult though - it would play through ok the first time but then on the second run you could see the images swapping before they'd fully faded out and it got worse the longer it ran. I was thinking about how to get it to start over ater one full run and then had a flash of inspiration about how to combine the two functions and presto! It worked.
g) For each image it shows, they each have their own link and alt attributes.
h) I even managed to figure out how to get it to stop swapping images AND fading in and out when you hover your mouse over it. Not only that, but it instantly goes to 100% opaque when you do, regardless of how far faded in or out it was at the time.
i) Although I did see Javascript versions of this sort of thing online, I decided to write it myself from scratch, (see point a) ) and my code is a lot shorter and simpler than those I saw. Occam's razor y'all.
j) It will be made freely available to anyone who wants it at some point, fully commented and ready to use.
Finally a paradox struck me tonight. I LOVE the act of typing. Love it. I like writing blogs or writing code and my head swims daily with ideas for stories, or parts of them.
So why the fuck can't I seem to get my arse in gear and actually finish writing at least one of my novels?
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Which would consist of seeing you and Zoe - and that's about it.... Ha ha!!